Pyrrhic
by Lys ap Adin
Summary: PostHogwarts. Draco asks Harry to come see him. nonslash, some OotP details


Notes: Angst, no pairings. Some dialogue taken directly from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Contains minor details from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Alludes to events in OotP, but does not spoil them.  
  
Harry Potter is owned by JK Rowling. No copyright infringement is intended.  
  
Pyrrhic  
  
It begins in a boxy room a few meters square. There is no door. The walls are rough stone, and there is a single window allowing light to pass into the room. Bars cut the light into segments that fall in discrete lozenges across the rumpled cot. A man sits on the cot, hands folded in his lap. He does not move. He has learned the habit of stillness here.  
  
The blank wall opposite the window shimmers. A door, heavy oak bound with steel and magic, appears there. The man does not look up from his fingers as the door opens.   
  
~*~  
  
It begins in a shop on a busy street. Bolts of cloth in every color of the rainbow line the walls and spill across tables and counters. Dummies model the latest fashions, smiling and nodding to the customers, and saleswitches bustle to and fro with pins and measuring tapes as they fuss over the fittings of robes.  
  
A boy stands on a stool, draped in a robe too long for him. He is being fitted for his school robes, and boredom makes him restless, talkative. His parents are elsewhere, examining the school wares in other shops. He hopes they are looking at brooms.  
  
The bell over the shop's door tinkles as it opens.  
  
~*~  
  
It begins in a room that is dark, even with the torches lighting the tiers of seats on three of the walls and the high benches on the fourth. Witches and wizards fill the seats, rows upon rows of them, with expectant faces all turned to look at the same object: a chair in the center of the floor, with chains that bind the man sitting there into place. Witches and wizards file into their seats among the fourth wall's benches. They too watch the prisoner, and they are waiting.  
  
In one corner of the room, a door swings open.  
  
~*~  
  
He enters.  
  
~*~  
  
He says something to the two wizards who would follow him into the cell. They want to argue with them, but a decisive shake of his head prevents this. They step back, sullen, and he closes the door in their faces. He turns, planting his feet wide, and folds his arms. He is wearing Muggle clothes, and he is wandless. He does not say anything.  
  
The man on the cot looks up. "Potter. To what do I owe the pleasure?"  
  
"You asked for me, Malfoy."  
  
"So I did... three weeks ago." Draco smiles, lips thinning and stretching and showing no real humor. "Do the Aurors really keep you that busy?"  
  
"They keep me busy enough that I can't afford to waste my time on the whims of Death Eaters," Harry says.  
  
"I'm honored that you could fit me into your busy schedule." Draco stands and executes a mock bow. "But then, I'm sure you count yourself lucky to have received my invitation. Very few are so privileged."  
  
Harry loses his patience. "What the hell do you want, Malfoy?"  
  
~*~  
  
The boy is young and reed-thin. He wears Muggle clothes too large for him and stares about the shop with wide eyes. Draco instantly marks him for a Mudblood. One of the saleswitches leads the boy to the stool next to Draco, and begins fitting him for Hogwarts' robes. Draco decides to have a bit of fun at the boy's expense. He remarks about Quidditch and brooms, and delights as the confusion blossoms in the other boy's eyes. Draco takes special pleasure in mentioning the houses of Hogwarts, and seeing the uncertainty and worry added to the confusion. This Mudblood bumpkin is easy prey.  
  
He sees the great oaf in the window waving to the boy, and switches topics. "I say, look at that man!" he says, wondering if this is a relative.  
  
"That's Hagrid. He works a Hogwarts." The boy's pleasure in knowing something about Hogwarts that Draco does not is evident.  
  
Draco laughs privately at the Mudblood for supposing there was something he would know better than the son of a very old and pureblooded wizarding family. "Oh, I've heard of him. He's a sort of servant, isn't he?"  
  
"He's the groundskeeper."  
  
Draco likes the way the boy is leaping to Hagrid's defense. It makes it so easy. "Yes, exactly. I heard he's a sort of *savage* -- lives in a hut on the school grounds and every now and then he gets drunk, tries to do magic, and ends up setting fire to his bed."  
  
"I think he's brilliant," says the Mudblood boy, and dislike is hardening in his eyes.  
  
~*~  
  
He walks forward and bows to the Wizengamot, Auror robes swirling around him. Even now, after many repetitions of this, the wizards and witches watching murmur among themselves about him: The Boy Who Lived, The Man Who Killed Voldemort. The Chief Witch of the Wizengamot calls the trial to order, and announces him. "Harry James Potter, Auror, witness for the prosecution."  
  
Draco lifts his chin high and stares into middle space during the testimony. The chains binding him to the chair are heavy and tight. If he sits in this chair long enough, he will dissolve into it. His arms will become the chair's arms, his back the chair's back, and so on. He is still thinking about this when the Wizengamot pronounces a verdict.  
  
~*~  
  
"What do I want, Potter?" Draco laughs. "I want to choke you until your face turns black. I want my mother out of St. Mungo's. I want my father alive. I want to be free. Pick one."  
  
"Save letting you throttle me, how am I supposed to help with any of that?" Harry asks. "Your mother spends her time singing nursery rhymes to a pillow she thinks is you. Your father is dead. Your appeal for a commutation of your sentence failed." He says this last with satisfaction.  
  
"All thanks to you," Draco mutters. He turns his back on Harry and stares out the window.  
  
Harry shrugs, even though Draco cannot see him. "Blame me if you want, but I'm not the one with the Death Mark on his arm."  
  
"But you're the one who pushed for stronger penalties for convicted Death Eaters," Draco says. "You're the one the Ministry listened to."  
  
"I was the figurehead of popular sentiment."  
  
"That's rubbish." Draco turns on Harry, his hands flexing and curving in the short quick motions one uses to wring a chicken's neck. "You lie so very well. You might have done Slytherin proud."  
  
"You wish. What do you want, Malfoy? I don't have much longer." Impatience edges Harry's voice.  
  
"Tell me, Potter, have you ever seen what it is all that work you did accomplished?" Draco looks closely at Harry's face. "No, I thought not. You don't look like a man who cares very much for consequences."  
  
"Malfoy," Harry growls.  
  
"Patience, patience. I'm coming to my point. I want you there, Potter. I want you to see your final triumph." Draco's eyes burn into Harry's. "I want you to be there, to gloat and swagger and pose for the swooning masses of your fans."  
  
Harry stares at him.  
  
Draco smiles again. "Unless you're afraid to come and watch."  
  
"I'm not afraid!" Harry retorts. "I have better things to do."  
  
"Excuses, excuses. If you aren't there, I win, Potter."  
  
"I've never lost to you, Malfoy." Harry glares at him. "I'll be there."  
  
Draco's smile becomes even wider. "You've never lost to me *yet*, Potter." He turns, flicking his hands at the other man. "Two days then. You may go."  
  
Harry stares at Draco's back and then turns to the door. He exits, and the door returns to being nothing more than a wall. Draco resumes his seat on the cot, hands folded in his lap, and waits.  
  
~*~  
  
It ends in a stone amphitheatre, filled with silent witches and wizards. They do not gossip or fidget. They avoid one another's eyes. They wait.  
  
They avoid looking at the pit in the center of the amphitheatre, and the stone arch there. They try. Their eyes slide back to it, following the slight billows of the veil hanging in the arch. Despite the number of people crammed into the room, it is cold.  
  
Draco Malfoy enters, dressed in a coarse grey robe. Two burly wizards escort him, and his hands are chained. Harry Potter follows them, dressed in his Auror's robes. He has not been in this room for years, but he sees it often in his nightmares.  
  
A wizard waits for them by the veil. He reads aloud from a scroll. "Draco Malfoy, you have been tried and found guilty by the Wizengamot of crimes against Muggles and wizardkind, of being a Death Eater and loyal servant to Voldemort, and of conspiring to bring about the overthrow of the Ministry of Magic. For these crimes, you have been sentenced to death." He rolls the scroll up and tucks it away. "Do you have any final words?"  
  
Draco looks around the amphitheatre, at the faces hungry for blood and spectacle. He looks at Harry, who watches the undulations of the veil with something that is both horror and longing on his face. He smiles. "You only think you've won," he says. Still smiling, he walks through the arch.  
  
--end  
  
Comments and criticism will be happily accepted. 


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